Land Alienation in Indigenous Minority Communities. Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia

This report updates a report entitled “Land Alienated from Indigenous Minority Communities in Ratanakiri” (NGO Forum on Cambodia, November 2004). Both the 2004 report and this 2006 report look at the situation of land alienated from indigenous communities in Ratanakiri province in the northeast of Cambodia. A comparison of the situations in November 2004 and January 2006 leads to the following conclusions:

„ Since the previous report in 2004, land alienation has increased in severity in 30 percent of communes and has continued unabated in most of the remaining 70 percent.

„ The problem of land alienation has been reported in 4 new communes.

„ In accordance with the 2001 Land Law, participants of the “Workshop to Seek Strategies to Prevent Indigenous Land Alienation” in March 2005 publicly acknowledged that both selling and buying of Indigenous Peoples’ land is illegal. Participants included provincial governors, representatives from the Ministry of Land Management Urban Planning, and commune councils. The illegality of the vast majority of land sales in Ratanakiri has also been confirmed by national and international legal experts.

„ In spite of a Prime Ministerial Order and a Provincial Deika in support of the 2001 Land Law and the 2002 Forestry Law, the majority of these problems have arisen as a result of a lack of law enforcement. NGOs and communities express a strong concern at the apparent lack of commitment to governance, which appears to be the main barrier to resolution of these problems.

„ The problem has progressed to the stage where some communities have disintegrated. There has already been a severe loss of cultural and social resources.

„ Communities report that problems usually start when powerful outsiders develop relationships with opportunistic people in the community (who are often local authorities, police or military) in order to secure land sales. In many cases these sales have been supported or “approved” by commune councils and/or higher levels of government.

„ Communities report that, if this situation is allowed to continue, it will lead to a severe disruption of community processes and destroy the solidarity and cohesion within communities. This transforms previously cohesive communities into disparate groups of people or individuals selling community land and forest, and the situation becomes very difficult to control.